The present disclosure relates to the field of computers, and specifically to the field of computers that are used in storage area networks (SANs). Still more specifically, the present disclosure relates to the field of migrating data from a first SAN to a second SAN.
Storage migrations rely on SAN to SAN transfer of block-based data utilizing available throughput rates. Storage migrations are currently sized according to the capacity of the telecommunications wire between the originating datacenter and the receiving datacenter. The capacity of the wire (e.g., a physical pathway for data such as a network, an Ethernet wire, etc.) provides the system with an estimate of the amount of traffic the line can handle. This line size is compared against the number of terabytes (TB) of data to be migrated and the number of times the data will be migrated. However, this type of sizing methodology does not take into account that one or more disks at the target SAN may be degraded due to older technology (e.g., able to handle a lower number of Input-output Operations Per Second (IOPS)); the response time requirements by other workloads concurrently utilizing disk systems in the target SAN (i.e., what response times are required to be met by jobs that use the target SAN, which may be affected by a SAN migration); and any additional streams utilizing the SAN (such as backup migrations).
Currently, the SAN migration methodology does not utilize SAN constraints when sizing the timing of the migration. That is, only the line speed and the number of migrations are taken into account. Neither of these factors take into account the capabilities of the target SAN or the other workloads migrating across the fabric. That is, throughput can be constrained by a variety of factors, including the number of IOPS that can occur, response time, and throughput as measured by sustained Mega Byte (MB) transfer rate. Thus, constructing proper environments, restraints, and resources used during SAN migrations is often problematic, since there is not a clear picture of the capabilities of the fabric (i.e., the source SAN, the target SAN, and the network between the two SANs). This leads to improper sizing of blocks of data being migrated from one SAN to another SAN, leading to excessive migration times, overloading of resources in the source SAN and/or the target SAN, and increased error rates during the migration.